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ALT’s Halloween-candy mask

I’ve never celebrated Halloween, invented 2,000 years ago in Celtic Ireland; I don’t even remember trick-or-treating as a child. But upon receiving **Michael Dougherty’**s invitation to his tenth Halloween Haunted House party with DJ spinmaster Jeremy Lingvall in L.A.’s Hancock Park, I decided to make an effort. Dougherty, as you know, directed Anna Paquin in Trick’r Treat and wrote such movies as X2 and Superman Returns.

What to do to make my urban-elegant Prada coat into something appropriate for the holiday? One morning, the eureka moment came. Why not ask Dylan Lauren, of Dylan’s Candy Bar in New York, to come up with masks made of candy, something befitting Canaletto’s Venetian carnivals? Lauren, who has the ne plus ultra candy store, has been passionate about sweets since she was six, when she saw Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. In 2001, she opened her candy emporium, where First Lady Michelle Obama and her daughters bought a candy-inspired tank top and shorts, along with a pack of Bubble Yum, a Twix bar, and two tackle boxes filled with goodies in March. (Other hot choices: Madonna has bought Red Hots; Beyoncé, sugar-free gum; and Oprah, fruit slices.) In her new book, Dylan’s Candy Bar: Unwrap Your Sweet Life (Clarkson Potter), Lauren has lavishly recorded her candy-land obsession, from asking her mother, Ricky, to walk to the store in a snowstorm for Cadbury Creme eggs while she studied for the SATs to decoupaging chairs and tables after college with gum and chocolate-bar wrappers (the inspiration for the fantastic masks she created). The book also includes tips (drink ice water after eating a bag of jelly beans; you will expend 123 calories to warm it to body temperature) and recipes (like sea bass with a sesame-seed-candy crust).

“My goal is to merge, fashion, art, and pop culture with candy and to inspire the creative spirit and inner child in everyone,” said Lauren, who is engaged to hedge fund manager Paul Arrouet. When you consider $2 billion is spent on Halloween candy each year, think of her retail profits for all holidays.